


An Unprofessional Evening

by Ashling



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Trick or Treat 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-11 14:23:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16477235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: Dinah has had a long day.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shopfront](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/gifts).



Despite the chilly autumn air and the cold metal of the park bench against her back, Dinah is nearly asleep by the time she hears a soft thump to her left.

“Hi?” she murmurs.

“Hey,” Karen says softly. “Are you okay? You didn’t call.”

“I know. Didn't want to interrupt you at work.” Dinah opens her eyes, or at least her left one. The right eye’s still pretty swollen from a hard right hook she took just a few hours before.

When she sees the way Karen is looking back at her, she wants to close her eyes again. She was expecting a mix of curiosity and concern, but this is something softer, quieter.

“Are you okay?” Karen repeats, and doesn’t ask for the story at all.

“Yeah.” Dinah sits up a bit, stifling a grimace at the ache of bruises and pulled muscles, and tries to sort herself out. “I thought about texting you, but that seemed like a work thing, and I’m not feeling professional today.” She opens the big blue reusable grocery bag at her side to reveal the beer.

Karen gives a low whistle. “It’s not even dinner yet. Did you get fired?”

“Oh. No.” Dinah had forgotten the four empty spaces in one of the six-packs. “I’ve only had a couple. One was for Ricky and one was for Miguel.” She gestures at two benches down, where Miguel sits, sorting through his stuff, and then further down, where Ricky is taking a nap under a heap of blankets. 

“Mm.” Karen makes a little noise of acknowledgement, and Dinah feels an unexpected rush of fondness at this, the way Karen has grown comfortable with their silences, doesn’t feel the need to say that Dinah’s generous, understands that this is just a retelling of events and not fishing for compliments. The big green scarf she’s wearing looks so soft, too. Dinah kind of wants to touch it.

“Well,” says Karen after a minute, “you can’t drink on an empty stomach.”

This is exactly what Dinah was hoping to hear, but she also feels a little guilty. “You’re right, but I’ll probably get tacos or something on the way home. I just wanted to say hi.”

Dinah can be a great liar, which is how she knows she’s being a terrible liar right now.

Fair enough,” Karen says patiently, “but I need a guinea pig to try my new Italian skills on, anyhow.”

“I don’t have any tips for you.”

“That’s all right.”

“And even if we don’t hang out, you’ll still be my go-to leaker.”

“I know.”

That stops Dinah mid-worry. “You know?”

“When it comes to municipal corruption, I’m the best in town. Of course I’ll still be your go-to.” She smiles.

Dinah can’t help it; she smiles in return. “I’m just saying, we don’t have to spend time outside of business. I fully intend to drink more than two beers and I fully intend to be completely unprofessional.”

“Good. I’ve never seen Dinah Madani be unprofessional before. Sounds fun.” Karen gets up, and offers Dinah her hand. “Come on.”

Dinah expects the hand to be just a gesture, a bit of help to haul her off the bench, but she’s wrong. Ten seconds later, she finds herself strolling through the park with her bag of beer slung over her shoulder, hand in hand with Karen Page. 


	2. the evening itself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> pasta, among other things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had half a scene of Theo written when I published the first chapter, and then I started thinking about cooking and getting soft, and well, this happened.

  
  


When Dinah opens the shop door for Karen, a few bells tinkle. Karen sees the green and red ribbons tied to them, and grins. “Isn’t it a bit early for Christmas, Theo?” she calls.

All around, there are absolutely massive cheeses and cured meats, a delightful sight to someone as hungry Dinah. Behind the long butcher’s counter, a square-faced man with shoulder-length sandy hair and a friendly expression waves his free hand at her. The other hand is holding an absolutely enormous cleaver.

“Never too early for Christmas, Karen! Who’s your friend?”

“This is Dinah,” Karen says.

“Is Fisk back in business or something?” Theo asks, gesturing at Dinah’s bruised face.

She’s not offended. “I had a long day at work,” she says.

“Yeah?” he says, good-naturedly curious.

“I’m just glad I caught you while you’re still on duty,” Karen cuts in, and Dinah doesn’t need protection, but it’s still nice. 

“Double shift tonight. Harry’s at home with the flu.”

“I’m sorry to hear he’s sick, but not sorry to see you still at work.” Karen drums her hands on the counter and looks around, clearly seeking something. “What do you got, Nelson?”

“You’re gonna like this one.” He grins, then goes to wash his hands. “The greatest American foodstuff ever invented!”

“Hamburgers?”

“Better!” He throws a little wrapped package over the counter, which Karen catches one-handed. “Bacon!”

“You’re the best, Theo.” Karen grins, then stops. “Actually, do you have anything else?”

“Maybe, why?”

“It’s fine,” Dinah says. She shares many things with her father—the long work hours, the dark eyes, the stubbornness—but God is not one of them.

“All right. See you tomorrow, Theo. Good luck with the second shift.”

“Good meeting you, Dinah. Come again.”

Karen takes Dinah’s hand again on the way out, and Dinah marvels at how quickly and easily she’s been welcomed into the daily routines of Karen’s home life.

 

 

 

 

Karen won’t let Dinah do any of the cooking, so Dinah finds herself in the unfamiliar position of having nothing to do. Usually she works late, picks up food on the way home, and hits the mattress first thing. If it’s a weekend and she gets kicked out of the office for working too much, she’ll head over to her mother’s. There, she can raid her mom’s spacious fridge, sit about in the living room wearing her old blue slippers, and make leisurely talk about everything from criminal psychology to whether or not they think Parvaneh’s latest engagement is gonna make it to the altar. 

This is a little bit like that, and also nothing at all like that. Karen’s place is small, more cozy than cramped, with lots of warm golden light from the kitchen lamp. An pile of mail takes up significant space on the floor beside a dented metal filing cabinet, and none of the kitchen chairs match, but Karen has clearly made an effort, too, with a few framed pictures hung up on the walls, a fresh coat of pear green paint on the kitchen, and a hook for her purse on the pantry door.  

Karen herself looks well at home there, pushing the chopped-up bacon round in a pan with a delicious sizzling sound. As soon as they got in, she put a pot of water on to boil, disappeared into the bedroom, and replaced the pencil skirt and blazer with sweatpants and flannel. The professional white t-shirt remains, though, and there’s something about that, the faint accent of satin around the neckline contrasting with the rough red plaid of the flannel, that’s constantly catching Dinah’s eye. That and the way a few strands of her pale hair have escaped their messy bun. They keep splashing against the nape of her neck and sliding under the collar of the flannel and Dinah thinks maybe she’d like to fix it, free that glorious hair entirely and comb it out with her fingers and, um.

Dinah puts down her half-empty beer and leans forward in her chair. “You sure I can’t—”

“Nope,” Karen says decisively.

That makes Dinah smile. She settles back in the chair and just watches for a few minutes as Karen adds some spaghetti to the boiling water, cracks a few eggs, separating yolks from whites.

After a while, the pain in Dinah’s face and side (and right wrist and both knees) subsides to a dull ache, and the silence is comfortable, but she wants to talk. She’s a little alarmed to find that she don’t have much to go on that doesn’t fall into the professional side of things.

“So these Italian skills of yours, they’re new?” she says.

“Yeah. I’ve been getting lessons from this tiny lady, Mrs. Caciagli. Now that the Avocados are back at work and I help out on the weekends, my paycheck’s basically the same, but the bonuses are phenomenal.”

“The who are back at work?”

Karen smiles. “Matt and Foggy have opened up a law practice together again. I’ve even got my name on the front door with them, though I think that was more a gesture of friendship than anything else.”

Matt and Foggy. For a split second, Dinah is envious of the way that Karen drops their names so easily, the clear space they’ve got in her life, until she remembers that Karen had them on a first-name basis to Theo. Blame it on the beer, but that warms her a little.

“Anyways,” Karen goes on, “A lot of clients can’t pay in conventional ways, so we get a lot of, um, lessons. Lessons, and food, and offers to help us lift heavy things, which we rarely need, and then sometimes tickets to shows, the provenance of which we are not supposed to examine too closely.”

“Should you be telling me that?”

“The FBI’s not gonna go after us,” Karen scoffs. “We’re not big time enough for that.”

“We both know that’s not true.”

“Well, shady tickets aren’t big time enough.”

“Fair.” And Dinah’s maybe (no, definitely) reading too much into this, but she’s enjoying the way Karen puts all of her messes on display: the shady tickets and the mess of mail and the ratty old flannel. Billy was never like that. Billy’s suits were always perfectly tailored, his smiles were always perfectly charming, and his apartment--well, she never saw it. She used to be angry at herself when she remembered finding that kind of flawlessness attractive, but now she sees that Dinah as just—just young. 

“You good?” Karen says, and Dinah snaps out of it, finds that her bottle’s empty and Karen’s got two steaming plates in her hands. 

“Better than good.” Underneath the table, Dinah kicks a chair out, gallant and lazy and feeling a little like she’s someone else, or at least wandered into a daydream. 

Karen sits and swaps a plate of pasta for one of Dinah’s beers, and then they get down to eating. 

The spaghetti is savory with bits of bacon, creamy with egg yolk, and salty with Parmesan, the perfect hot meal to end a long day of hard work. It’s the first time in ages that someone else has cooked pasta for Dinah and she hasn’t felt the need to add more cheese. The first time in ages that someone not her mother has made her anything to eat at all, actually. 

Dinah doesn’t notice that she’s smiling until Karen says, “Yeah?” with raised eyebrows and a matching grin of her own.

“Mm-hm,” Dinah mumbles through a mouthful of pasta. 

And then there’s no more talking for a little while.

  
  


 

 

“You have to let me do the dishes, or else my grandmother’s gonna be rolling in her grave,” Dinah says. “You didn’t help me cook and you didn’t let me buy any of the groceries. So this is what happens.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do? Watch you wash my dishes?” And this is a role reversal, Dinah at the sink and Karen leaning back in that same chair with a beer in her hand.

“You could, if you like.” Dinah says, before she realizes that’s maybe not the best choice of words. “Or you could pick something for us to watch.”

“You’re inviting yourself over for Netflix?”

“I already invited myself over for dinner. How much worse can it get?”

“Well, I’m not sure it can get any better.” 

And before Dinah can puzzle out that compliment, Karen’s already on her feet, finishing her beer, and wandering off to poke around on her laptop. 

“Drama?” she calls back to Dinah above the noise of the running water.

“Not tonight.” Drama tends to have yelling and gunshots, and Dinah would much rather embrace the warm sleepy feeling of pasta sitting heavy in her stomach.

“Comedy?”

“Maybe.”

“Hasan Minhaj?”

“Too political.”

“Parks and Rec?”

“No.”

“Food documentary?”

“Depends. Is it one of those ones where they follow a guy around and he talks about running a restaurant 80% of the time and there’s only food at the end?”

“I don’t know. It just says Salt Fat Acid Heat, and it looks pretty.”

“Let’s do it.”

Dishes done, Dinah plops down on the sofa next to Karen and they both settle back. Dinah is fully prepared to endure a good two episodes of pure tension before they not-so-accidentally get closer, because most of her experiences with women were in college and that’s how college works (and because men are so much easier, in her experience, or maybe she’s just less afraid of disappointing them, better not examine that thought too closely).

But Karen foils those expectations almost immediately by putting an arm around Dinah’s shoulders. Her flannel smells like smoke. Dinah likes it.

A few minutes into episode one, and Dinah’s immediately caught in an age-old dilemma.  _ Should I tell her that I met Samin Nosrat once already at the Iranian-American Women Foundation’s Leadership Conference at NYU a couple years ago, or is that just gonna be fuel the they-all-know-each-other thing? _

Halfway into episode two, and Dinah has finally settled fully against Karen. Karen’s jaw nudges into the top of Dinah’s head. 

Near the end of episode three, and there’s Parmesan cheese onscreen. Karen says, without any prompting at all: “There’s leftovers in the fridge,” and Dinah gets up and microwaves it, comes back with one big bowl and two forks. 

Episode four, and Karen’s running her fingers through Dinah’s hair, or rather running her fingertips along Dinah’s scalp, unable to really comb all the way through because her curls are that thick. 

“Hey,” Karen murmurs, fingers stilling as the credits roll and Netflix queues up something 100% irrelevant to what they just watched.

“Yeah?” Dinah opens one eye, then the other.

“This unprofessional enough for you?” 

“Nearly.”

Karen presses a kiss to Dinah’s forehead, brief and warm. Then her fingers resume their wandering. “I like Unprofessional Dinah. Can I keep her?” 

“Yeah.” Dinah closes both eyes again. “Yeah.”


End file.
